The Girl In The Lost World
by MethuselahPixie
Summary: Ginko is yet again traveling across the mountains, seeking a town where the women say their husbands are vanishing into the wood. A strange girl. A perfect world. Will Ginko be able to once again come face-to-face with a new Mushi, and live? R&R please !


**Ch. 1**

_Ginko: Mushi Master of_ _Mushishi_

Birds echo through the trees, the soothing sounds of a rushing river meet my ears, not another's footsteps to be heard. Green fills my vision as I open my one eye and walk calmly over to the small lake the river feeds, hands in my pockets, a content smile on my face. Hesitating slightly at the water's edge, my box clanks slightly as I lean over to see my reflection, white bangs drifting from over my right eye. My smile is gone as I catch sight of the black hole where the eye used to be, gaze tight and hard. I am Ginko the Mushi Master, out traveling the world, unable to settle down, and perfectly content with that fact. Here the water is pure, the forest is alive with life force, and the Mushi stay away, even without smoking. I lift my head up to the tree tops to see glittering birds flirt from branch to branch gracefully. What a wondrous place. Uninhabited, thats why. There are no people, I think, with a slight smile. Perfect without people around. Turning from the pond's edge, I sigh and continue on my way. If I didn't find a village soon, I'd starve. Two days without anyone to buy food from was taking it's toll on me.  
I walk through the trees, searching the thick trunks abundant with ants and regular moss and fungi life forms for a break, a person, a hut, out here. After a few more minutes, my stomach growls loudly. This time it feels like it's eating itself. "Ugh," I mutter, kicking up leaves with dragging feet as I ignore the noise and try to focus on finding somewhere to sleep and eat before I keel over.

**Ch. 2**

A laugh sounds from nearby. I jerk my head in it's direction, pinpointing the voice of a small girl's laughter, and follow it, to my right. Strange. There have been no homes, no farms, nothing but miles of forest for days. What would a child be doing out here alone?  
I push aside a low hanging branch dappled in bright green leaves and step down about four inches. Releasing the branch, I peer down where flat ground used to be. Child-sized steps carved from worn dirt and stone lead a crookedly steep path around various clusters of tall trees, a small shrub or bush here and there the shortest things around other than blades of grass. I lift my gaze to see the narrow path leads towards two bushes with giant leaves cloaking it like a doorway, and blink. Not that there wouldn't be random stairs carved by amateur hands out here, but I don't think they made it like this on accident. It looked like the entryway to some kid's fantasy land.  
Curiosity got the best of me and I make my way down the steps slowly, not wanting to slip and injure myself on such a small path. I hang on to the trees that make out turns for the path and keep my eyes on the ground. Better not to be reckless, seeing as this actually might be a change from just seeing trees everywhere I look. I reach the two bushes and hold their leaves aside, squinting as strong sunlight hits my face. As my eye adjusts, it widens, and I freeze in shock.

**Ch. 3**

A girl squats alone at the edge of a small creek, giggling and watching the fish dart back and forth, no older then seven or eight. Her long blue hair glistens in the bright sunlight, brighter then the part of the forest I came from, and I see her eyes are as green as emeralds and shine like pearls. "Hey," I call out to her, stepping forward. "can you tell me where I am?"  
The little girl looks up, startled, and a big smile breaks out across her face.  
"You've made it! Oh, I've been waiting for you to arrive!"  
She gets up and dances over to me as light as a sakura petal. Though she is only to my waist, she hugs me tightly and sighs as if greeting a husband gone for many long years. I blink and set my hand on the top of her head.  
"Uh, waiting for me?" I ask, confused. "Where are we?"  
The little girl smiles and as I blink once more, she seems to grow an inch taller.  
"You're in my world now. This," she said, motioning to the trees and bushes all seeming to be shaped like a garden and a home made of bent trees and plant life. "is what I call Mushishi."  
I look up to see even the tree tops are bent in, leaving only a small circle of sunlight pouring down on us, yet it's this bright. Everything seems... bigger, somehow.  
But it is only a trivial change and I ignore it, turning back to the girl as she steps back and looks up at me with a sweet smile, fluttering her long dark eyelashes.  
"Your world? Mushishi? Look, do you have a village, little one? Any parents or friends?"  
The girl's smile vanished and her pretty face seemed to fall a bit.  
"No. No one. Just you, and me," she said, her smile back again. "come on, you must see these! They're truly wonderful!" She grabs my hand and drags me over to the creek's riverbed as I search the trees for any sign of other life. Nothing. It's like she lives here all alone. As she forces me to crouch at the water's edge I peer down into the water to see harmless jellyfish-like Mushi swimming around in quiet bliss. Their glow is bright though they are fairly large in this deeper bend of the small river.  
"You live here all alone, and you can see Mushi?" I ask her, looking away from the strange sight to peer at her gazing at the Mushi. She just tucks her arms against her sides and hunches her shoulders, eyes caught on the beauty of the beings, smile warm yet far off, "They have been my only friends," her voice echoes slightly as I blink once more and yet again we seem to be getting even in height as she turns her spring green eyes bright with fascination on me. "but now I have you, so we can all be happy together,"  
Her gaze is hypnotizing and I see her smile grow.  
"our own Mushi family."

**Ch. 4**

_"I've always wanted a family."_  
The girl told me her name was Takara, meaning Treasure, Precious Object. I smiled and told her it suited her, and she laughed, asking me what my name was.  
We walked through the gardens she had planted as I told her about myself. I travel all over, unable to settle down else attract too many Mushi to one place, my name is Ginko, and that I've never had a true home, as far as I remember. She looked very sad when I told her this. "Never had a home? That's terrible! You must have a home and a family to know how to love and be loved!"  
I drop my gaze over the water where I perch on a tree root, elbows on my knees. It seems as if we've known each other forever, yet knew nothing of the other's past. "I was found on the side of a road and nursed back to health by a kind farmer," I said simply. "I couldn't bear making anyone unhappy by torching with beings they couldn't see, so I left. Haven't settled down since."  
I noticed the Musi kept a safe distance away from both of us, so I saw no need for smoking most of the time. But Takara.  
Her smile and her laugh were captivating. To an old man like me, it was strange to be getting so attached to a young girl like her. Yet we seemed to be getting the same in size every time I seem to space out and come back from my own collection of her in my head. It wasn't as if she was growing - no, that wasn't it. It was more like... Oh, well, it didn't matter. Fact was, there was no worries here. No people to bother them. No rain. Nothing but nature and Takara.

**Ch. 5**

It feels like years since I've left this place. My box, cloak, socks and shoes stay in the trunk of a tree Takara says will keep them safe, though I haven't needed them. We live for the moment, never slowing or ceasing to have fun, thought of leaving never crossing my mind. It's amazing how sucked in to all this I am. Play. Laugh. Talk. Sleep. I've never felt this way about any place before; it's so strange. Takura says this place, these trees, this creek, these plants, have become my home. Our home. So the both of us can be happy here.  
I relish this feeling and hold tight to it, never wanting to let go of this perfect and whole warmth filling the lonely, isolated hole in my heart.  
Not long ago she learned of my eye. We were drinking from the creek when she glanced down and gasped in shock at the black on my face. Many times while I dream I feel her delicate hands brush my bangs aside to gaze at the dark hole hidden beneath them, but I don't rebuke her. It's nice to know she cares for me enough not to shun the fact I only have one eye. We play all day and sleep side by side, under the bright and beautiful moon, a different place each time the sun vanishes behind the trees. Content with the way we are, the way we live. Happy, together - forever.

**Ch. 6**

Takara and I are the same height now. She measures us by the heights of the small trees, and says we're both 4.6. I'm in no shock. This change has been happening for awhile, and though there are flickers of memory in my head telling me I was 6.2 before I came, I don't care anymore. Takara fills my life every day with just being her and I can't seem to escape; not that I would ever want to, but she has a strange hold over me that captivates my interest. I must be getting foolish.  
Takara tells me the change from being an adult to an eight year old has been completed, it not phasing me a bit, and I ask her how she became this way.  
"It started out, with my father, she began, both of us lying on our backs in a small patch of grass under our favorite tree. "He was always working. Always writing numbers, and counting, and never had time for me. We lived in a small village I don't know where, in a little house on a hill. "Father told me when I was very small my mother had left him one night without saying goodbye to either of us and had never been seen again, this made me sad. But father was much more sad after that. So grieved and anguishing over her, that he began neglecting me.  
"He tried and tried to be a good single father, but he was just not cut out to parent and raise me alone. So, soon... he gave up.  
"I played in my tree house, passed the fields and the trees, in a clearing not far from my home, because I always went when I was sad about something. Always drawing pictures of a better father, a mother, and maybe a baby brother; the perfect family, all the time.  
"When I got older, I decided I didn't need a father anymore. I wanted a husband. A boy I could always talk to and be myself around, and he would love me for everything I said and did; but I never wanted a gruff man who only wanted me for my beauty. No. I wanted a child like myself - I was always young at heart - and one day I drew a picture of the most handsome, perfect boy on the planet. You."  
I turn my head in the grass to look at her.  
"It looked exactly like me?"  
Takara giggled.  
"Exactly. Same pretty white hair, same handsome green eye, everything."  
I rested my cheek in the soft green blades.  
"Still only with one eye?"  
She nodded, and I was pleased. My Takara had wanted me just the way I was, flaws and all, and that made me the happiest I'd ever felt before.  
"So one day, when I was slim and beautiful and just turning 14, I was up in my tree house dreaming of the boy I'd always wanted, drawing better and better pictures of you every day," she continued. "and... I fell."  
I blinked.  
"You fell?"  
She nodded once more.  
"My tree house had been there for years and years before we moved in, before I was born, and then fourteen years after that. It was old and rotting, but I didn't care. It was my sanctuary. My safe place; perfection at it's best, to me, anyway.  
"So I was mixing colored pencils, trying to bring out the pretty grass green in your eye, when I heard a fairly loud crack. Of course I was frightened and packed away all my things as quick as I could, but when I stood with them in my arms... the floor fell through, and I plummeted; farther then all the way to the ground, and farther still to the center of the earth, and then I hit ground and passed out.  
"When I woke, all my drawings of you were gone and I was lying right here. I used to lie here and look up at the sky to see where I'd come from, but it's not there; every time I look."  
I turned my gaze back to the sky, both of our arms spread wide, fingers just touching, clothes askew but not dirty. The collar of my shirt was opened two buttons and my pants were horribly wrinkled - but I still didn't give them a second thought.  
"That's so strange," I whispered. "how did you know I would come?"  
Takara just smiled.  
"I knew you would come, because I loved you, and I knew you loved me too, and would come and be with me forever like I'd always dreamed."  
Her smile was infectious, and soon it was copied onto my own face.  
"I do love you," I said to her. And she said back, as simply as could be.  
"I know."

**Ch. 7**

I am the luckiest boy in the world. Notice how I don't even refer to myself as a 30 year old man anymore? That's because I'm not. I'm a boy again. Let me say it once more.  
I'm the luckiest, happiest, most content boy in the world.  
Today, Takara and I found a pretty waterfall. It was short, and was fed by a larger river then our little creek, but it was flawless. Perfect waves of crystal water sparkled like dropping diamonds, rushing and whispering. It washed both big and small river rocks smoothed from centuries of this water flow and supported cattails and bamboo and every type of grass I'd ever seen and more. It was wondrous.  
So then I asked her.  
"Why don't the Mushi act normally and smother us?"  
Takara just let the waterfall wash over her hands with a pretty little smile, emerald eyes warm.  
"Because I don't want them to. I control everything here," she giggled at me. "I'm like a Princess ruling over her country."  
This is odd to me. I tug my pants up a bit and crouch beside her, peering down into the water.  
"You're more beautiful then any Princess in the world, but why rule over everything? Do you not like things the way they're supposed to be?"  
"No. I do not," Takara replied. "not when they make me unhappy."  
I swallowed as sudden realization struck me and rolled up my sleeves, reaching into the water and pulling out a small snail the size of a pebble. "Everything has flaws that make people unhappy. If I did not make you happy, would you change me because of my flaws?"  
"Yes," Takara said simply, shaking off her hands. "I want us both to be happy, and the only way to do that is to change you to suit me better, that way we never have any problems together."  
Shocked and disbelieving, I stare at her with my one good eye wide, snail plopping back into the water from my pale, limp fingers.  
"Have you changed me yet?"  
Takara, my precious Takara, smiled snidely at me and shrugged.  
"Of course I have. You were a man changed to a boy; you had so many flaws I did not like, so I just got rid of them. And I'll make other changes if you show any signs of new flaws."  
I clench my jaw. She has changed what makes me, me. My soul is rooted with every flaw, every molecule of my being, and though I did not realize it before, she had altered it - and taken away my being unique by fixing my flaws any normal human would have.  
"Why did you do that, Takara?" I asked weakly, her control over me making it almost impossible to act harshly towards her.  
She looked at me then, a sort of glare in her eyes.  
"Because I need to control everything so everything is perfect and I can have everything the way I want it to be. Thats why."  
I stand and my sleeves fall back down over my small clenched fists.  
"I don't want you controlling me, Takara."  
She froze, her glare narrowed and merciless.  
"What? Aren't you happy living here, like this, with me?"  
A strange anger wells up in my chest, but I fight it, standing my ground against her.  
"I won't be truly happy unless I can love you like I am; flaws and all. If I cannot love your flaws and you you not love mine, then... then I don't love you, Takara."  
Her shock made tears spring up in her eyes. She rose and staggered away from me, stepping backwards into the water.  
"You... You're the one I've always dreamed of! You're my true love, I've been keeping my body here, alive, just for you!" Her voice rose considerably and it heightened in pitch as well. "You're the boy I created, molded perfectly, so we could live together forever and ever and be happy until eternity ended! [i]I love you![/i]"  
I watch as horns rise through her hair, eyes turning black, skin decaying before me, and her power over my mind began to loosen as I feel my flaws return to me. My jaw is set tight, my gaze is cold and unwavering, as I stare her down farther into the depths of the deep river.  
"You refused to see my flaws and accept them. You took control of my mind and played me like a violin. That's not love. [i]You don't love me.[/i] You never have, and Takara - you never will!"  
Her blackened eyes burst into ashes and she began wailing at the top of her lungs, horns growing far too large for her head as tentacles burst through her hands and feet, spraying the ground around the river with rotten flesh. Her mouth opened and she threw her head back and cried and screamed and thrashed wildly, the Mushi inside her struggling to free itself. Soon her dead body could no longer hold the strain.  
And it exploded. The Mushi was as tall as a skyscraper and as plump as Godzilla; a giant ball of flailing tentacles and pointed horns adorning it's head like a giant, deranged crown. It was a pale, sick yellow color, all it's life force drained away and wasted on this fantasy. It froze suddenly, the entire forest around me dissolving, the paradise I'd come to know and love vanished into the level forest it had been the entire time, the perfect blossoms and grass and shrubs rippling away into fungus covered brown trunks, an illusion created by the Mushi falling into pieces. Broken and killed by my words and occupying a dead body for so long, the Mushi itself burst into a million embers of bright yellow life force and all of them skittered away and were gone.  
After it was all over and I was returned to my normal age, height and flaw-full self, I fell to my knees and hit fainted away on the real forest floor, mind as utterly exhausted as my aching limbs.  
So much for true love.

**Ch. 8**

Ow. Why did my arms and legs - scratch that, why did my [i]everything[/i] hurt? My eyes fluttered open and I blink sleep from my eyes, groaning and squinting. Stupid light; it burned like fire on my retinas.  
Lifting my arms I crossed them over my eyes and grunted in pain, stretching every part of me slowly and carefully to make sure I was still all-in-tact. Oh, yeah.  
I'm lying on a Japanese-style futon and there is a soft white blanket pulled up to my chest that is the only thing I'm wearing; the room is fairly warm and there is sufficient sunlight coming through an open paper door to my right. I remember... unfortunately.  
"He's awake!" Came an older woman's voice from outside the door, and my heart sinks as she runs off to fetch the other nurses. Greeeeat. Probably a bunch of women when all I'm wearing is some thin white blanket. Perfectamundo to the max.  
Sitting up, I stretch my arms one by one across my chest and loosen up my tense shoulders, hunching over my lap with my elbows on my knees with a sigh. So. That whole illusion had been done by a Mushi, huh? Amazing. The girl had been perfect; everything had been perfect, thats why I'd been sucked in. Pausing in my thoughts, I felt a knot in my chest as I rethought that.  
No. I was a weak fool, that's why I got sucked in.  
I look up as about five women with dark hair and eyes run through the doorway and crowd around me, clapping their hands together and gasping and all talking at once.  
"You're awake! Oh, we were so worried..." "... are you all right? You seem very pale..." "... do you need anything..." "... anything at all..." "... are you sure you're OK to sit-"  
"Ladies, please," I say, holding up my hands to quiet them. "I'm fine, you are all too kind to this weary traveler. Thank you."  
They all began giggling quietly and blushing, so I went on. "Tell me," I said softly, their giggles fading. "where am I, and how did you find me?"  
The old woman spoke up.  
"You're in our village, just outside the forest we found you in."  
"Yes! We found you blacked out in the valley!"  
"It's only a three hour walk through the forest to the other village, we don't know how in the world you got lost."  
"But someone in the other town told us you'd left quite a few days ago and were worried because they knew you were coming to us."  
"So, we all went out looking for you."  
I lift my chin a bit and glance around this circle of girls. "That's right, I came here on the rumor you had men vanishing from the village. Is that correct?"  
One of the younger women sniffed.  
"Yes, that's right. All the husbands in this village had gone to the other town for supplies and returned to us after two entire days speaking strangely of a girl and a paradise that had tried to destroy them."  
"When it only takes six hours there and back," piped another.  
"So they said they'd just run away when they'd remembered they had all had wives at home."  
I smile suddenly.  
"I see. And did you make them pay dearly for their cheating?"  
All the women nodded.  
"Of course! We all made our husbands beg to be let back into the house."  
"I made mine sleep in the hen house!"  
"I made mine sleep out with the dog!"  
"Mine built a sewing room onto our house just so I'd let him sleep in our bed!"  
All the women laughed. My smile grew. I could tell they were relieved to have their loved ones returned to them, and I turned my head to look out the window. All these men had run away. I'd defeated the Mushi; and on my own.  
Maybe I wasn't such a weak fool after all.

**End**

**_____________________________________________________________________________________________________**

OK, I wrote this in three days. The night before I left for camp I spent from 5pm to 2am finishing chapters 7 & 8. What do you guys think??

The Mushi was the Genkakufo-su, or the Illusion Forcer.

Rate and Review please!


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